Michael Prescott's Blog

Guest post: Why Skeptics will never accept the existence of psi

Matt Rouge offers a thoughtful guest post on psi and dogmatic (capital-s) Skepticism. Take it away, Matt!

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(Eric Newhill, who is a frequent commenter here and an actuary and analyst at a large insurance firm, was kind enough to review this post for accuracy on statistical matters. Also, Michael always provides significant guidance on my guest posts. Much thanks to you both!) 

I had been thinking about writing this post for awhile, and I begin to fight my standard inertia bit more when I saw this article on Slate, dated May 17, 2017: "Daryl Bem Proved ESP Is Real. Which means science is broken."

Then, in the comments on this blog, Leo MacDonald referred to a related post on NEUROLOGICAblog: "Follow Up on Bem’s Psi Research."

We’ll be talking about these in a moment, but first my thesis:

Skeptics will never be compelled to accept the existence of psi because laboratory research involves difficult statistics that can be argued about ad infinitum, and exceptional individual cases of psi can be dismissed as “anecdotes” one by one.

Let’s look at both of these issues in turn.

Psi laboratory research

Here’s the money quote in the Slate article: “Bem had shown that even a smart and rigorous scientist could cart himself to crazyland, just by following the rules of the road.” Yes, folks, you’re cray cray if you believe in psi.

For the most part, researching psi under laboratory conditions means testing a lot of people and seeing if an effect is produced that cannot be explained by chance. One classic experiment is to have people guess which of four symbols is the target. The success rate across a reasonably large sample size should be 25%. If it is much higher than that, then one can in theory call it evidence of psi. One series of lab experiments that many believe showed evidence of psi is the ganzfeld experiments (Wikipedia is extremely biased against psi, but this will give you an intro to the facts at hand).

Skeptics can attack the design and conditions of such experiments, and they do so regularly, but there is a deeper issue at hand: there’s always the chance that the results of the psi experiment are due to, well, chance.

In a wide variety of fields, research is performed with the aim of achieving a p-value of .05. That means that there is a 5% chance (p = .05 = 5%) that the positive result achieved is due to chance. Experimental results within this predetermined p-value are often called “statistically significant.” Whether it’s medical research or the social sciences, p ≤ .05 is typically considered pretty good.

So, just do your psi lab research, get p ≤ .05, and you’ve proved psi, right? The world is changed forever, right?! Of course not. Because p = .05 is actually pretty lousy. It means there is a 1 in 20 chance that the experiment is, in effect, meaningless. I personally would not change my belief system based upon such a paltry stat, and I wouldn’t expect anyone else to do so, either.

But that’s fine, since we can get that p-value even lower, right? Eventually they’ll have to believe! Well, yes and no. One typically gets the p-value lower by increasing the sample size. The nature of statistics is such that, say, cutting that p-value in half can’t be done with double the sample size; the relationship is not linear, and for very small values of p, extremely large samples are needed.

Thus, getting p = .0001 (1 in 10,000 chance of being due to chance) would require a monumental sample size for one’s psi experiment, and even then Skeptics could more or less correctly say, “I’m not going to change my worldview based on this evidence when there is still a 1 in 10,000 chance that it’s nothing at all. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and that still isn’t extraordinary enough!”

So, we just have to give up, right? Not so fast! There’s a thing called meta-analysis, in which we get that sample size and p-value to where we want them by combining lots of different but related experiments. Sometimes you will read about a meta-analysis of psi experiments that claim very small p-values indeed, and someone may say something along the lines of, “The odds of this meta-analysis result being due to chance are over 3 trillion to 1!”

That’s great, but here’s the rub: meta-analysis is quite complicated. Different experiments using different methodologies need to be combined, and how that should be done is to some extent a matter of opinion and judgment. The calculations themselves require expert knowledge—this is far from Statistics 101 material—and the experts themselves can disagree on both the methods used and the meaning of the results. And that’s exactly what happens. The pro-psi statistician argues with the anti-psi statistician, and only a tiny fraction of the population on either side is qualified to assess what they are saying. It ends up a lot like the climate change argument: “Trust our smart guys. They’re really smart and there are a lot of them and those who disagree ought to be ashamed of themselves.” When you hear laboratory research on psi has been “debunked,” that’s typically what has happened: some credentialed person has gone over the numbers and declared them unconvincing. Or some media Skeptic has declared the methods and conditions of the experiment unacceptable. Either or both.

Thus, to recap, any given psi experiment is not enough to sway opinion, and trying to combine multiple experiments leads to arguments over recondite statistics. There simply is no way around it.

Going back to the Slate article, Daryl Bem performed a variety of experiments under rigorous conditions and came up with what appeared to be statistically significant results. Instead of merely saying that he was wrong (which of course they do), scientists and other members of the cognoscenti have pointed out that, yeah, the kind of statistical reasoning that has held sway in many fields for over a century is actually pretty lame. Hence the subtitle of the article: “Which means science is broken.”

Hearing this kind of thing is gratifying to an extent, as we proponents of psi have been pointing out the double standard for a long time: “How can you call things like psychology and sociology science when the designs of their experiments are a joke compared to what parapsychology has going on now, and they’re often satisfied with p = .10 or worse?” Cognitive dissonance can take quite a long time to resolve itself, but it seems that Skeptics and members of the scientific elite will not be moving forward by recognizing psi (duh) but instead by trashing the social sciences. For example, here’s an LA Times article from 2012: "Why psychology isn’t science." And now the reaction to Bem.

Psi laboratory research: my take

When I discussed the article on Bem with Michael, he said:

I read it. Mixed feelings. On one hand, it would be easy to dismiss the whole thing as an example of knee-jerk skepticism that would rather reject established scientific methods than accept any evidence for the paranormal.

But on the other hand, they may have a legitimate point in saying that these methods are faulty, not only when practiced by parapsychologists but by conventional scientists, as well. I suspect there is a lot of bad science out there, and that statistical analysis can be badly flawed.

I think this is exactly correct. I’m glad to see some consistency finally being applied, and the reality is that it’s difficult to prove things like drug efficacy, human behavioral traits, the existence of social trends, and psi effects using statistics.

Eric Newhill had this to say:

The effects in any single experiment are just statistical probabilities. Usually the stat significance is not that strong. Skeptics like to bring up the file drawer effect (studies that showed no stat significance are filed away, not published, not talked about, etc.).

Your comments on meta-analysis are spot on ... very complicated to do it right. Much opportunity for disagreement even among experts and, IMO, should only be done when the different experiments are using the same design (though at least small differences can always be found and raised as confounds).

Eric brings up a good point about the so-called file drawer effect. With respect to a given meta-analysis, Skeptics will claim that the pro-psi side is hiding negative results that would otherwise weaken the effect of the meta-analysis. One response to this is to ask whether the number of negative experiments required to cause such a reversion to a theoretical mean could even have been performed. The pro-psi side will say that hundreds of such experiments would be required, and thus the meta-analysis is correct. And on and on the arguments go.

Eric also raised this interesting point:

One last thing, and is usually passed over by even the best researchers. I have read some of the details of some of these experiments. The p-value for the cohort may be a little significant (or not), but there are often individuals that score very very high, well beyond chance. Whereas there are usually not individuals in the cohort that score very very low. This is meaningful in itself. I have always thought that a series of experimental replications should be run, and the individuals in each cohort scoring the highest should be put together into a super cohort and tested. Basically, take the most talented people, those showing unique psi abilities, and focus on them only. This should demonstrate psi well beyond chance and should produce results that raise the eyebrows of many Skeptics.

Right, some of the individual results are mind-blowing, but these become invisible within the larger statistical picture of the experiment.

Personally, I have read a decent amount about psi laboratory research, and I think the experiments, in the aggregate, do provide substantial evidence that psi exists. Yet I most likely would not be convinced by that evidence alone. Rather, it dovetails nicely with exceptional individual cases of psi and my own experience of psi. Nothing in the laboratory research contradicts this other evidence but is congruent with it. It is quite similar to how various sources of information on the Afterlife (NDEs, ADCs, channelings) match up very well.

Exceptional individual cases of psi

This is much less complicated to talk about. In his original comment on this blog referring to the NEUROLOGICAblog, Leo MacDonald said:

I personally believe the stronger cases comes from the so-called anecdotal claims.

Michael, in the conversation cited above, said:

But the really convincing cases are the prodigies who score incredible remote viewing hits or have an obvious, dramatic telepathic link—like the famous ESP experiments carried out by Upton Sinclair and his wife. These cases don't rely on statistical analysis, with its inherent danger of data mining.

And in the comments of the NEUROLOGICAblog post, Ian Wardell (who also comments on this blog), said:


I’m not really interested in such [laboratory] research though. I’m more interested in the spontaneous cases of psi.

Indeed. These cases are compelling. They really leave no escape.

We talk about exceptional cases of psi on this blog all the time. They involve the transmission of information that simply could not have been obtained except through psi, as well as the manipulation of matter itself. When reading the reports, one is left with two choices: believe that psi has been proven, or believe that highly intelligent, observant, and respectable researchers were fooled (as by stage magic) or were themselves simply lying. To provide two examples we discussed here before, Eusapia Palladino and D.D. Home produced or mediated extreme physical phenomena in adequate lighting conditions right in front of the eyes of researchers. These phenomena cannot conceivably be dismissed as “tricks”; the observers could not possibly have been fooled. Either what they say happened actually happened, or they were lying.

But that’s OK, the Skeptics have the classic strategy of deny, deny, deny. It doesn’t matter who saw or heard what. Their approach to psi is the approach they use on any paranormal phenomenon: deny. A séance that produced amazing information? Cold and/or hot reading and/or lucky guesses. Deny. An NDE that produced veridical information? Explain it away. Deny. Physical phenomena captured as photographs or video? Faked! Deny.

It’s really that simple. They think they can “divide and conquer” by simply denying each and every paranormal report in the history of planet Earth. Each of these is merely an “anecdote,” and the plural of “anecdote” is not “data”! They think that such an epistemological stance is self-evident instead of self-serving. They are untroubled by the double standard in which scientists who work in the materialist paradigm are capable of “observations” of individual cases, while those who are outside this paradigm are only capable of “anecdotes.” They find it reasonable to posit that people throughout history and in every location of the globe have reported psi phenomena of a consistent nature, yet they have all been mistaken. (I personally find it maddening that they dismiss this vast evidence from history yet remain incurious as to what caused such consistent mistakenness. Nothing to see here folks, move along …)

On rare occasions, a major Skeptic will have an experience that changes his or her thinking on the paranormal. Such happened to Michael Shermer. For his whole life, he was able to dismiss and denigrate the whole world’s paranormal experiences, but once something amazing happened to him, well, that’s totally different! And of course, the reaction of every “believer” to this conversion is smh…

Exceptional individual cases of psi: my take

What I find interesting is that Skeptics will say that they have never experienced psi or anything paranormal in their entire lives, nor do they know anyone who has had such an experience. This is the furthest thing from my own world.

My guess is that, when most Skeptics imagine a psychic reading, they see a flaky if not creepy psychic sitting in a dimly lit den of fraud, receiving money with greedy fingers, then proceeding to cold- and hot-read the victim and pump him or her full of generalities, superfluities, and, of course, lies and false hope.

In contrast, I am a psychic with many psychic friends. I’ve given readings and gotten more than a few big hits. I’ve received readings and have witnessed more than a few big hits. To us, it’s nothing unusual, odd, or spooky. We trade psychic advice on virtually a daily basis, in fact. No special setting or mood is required; in fact, I give and receive most readings over Facebook these days. Further, I make no money off of psi at all (I give readings for free on a frequent basis, actually). About half of my psychic friends do charge for readings or other psi abilities, but they do a lot of pro bono as well, and absolutely no one is getting rich from these services. I can also observe that my psychic friends are extremely normal and down-to-earth, and none of them fits the stereotype of the New Age flake (OK, we mostly don’t fit that stereotype!). I can assert without equivocation that I have never heard a friend refer to doing anything psychic in a fraudulent or less than sincere way.

In short, psi works for us consistently and on certain occasions amazingly. What incentive would we have to make it a part of our lives if it didn’t? I’m not naïve: Skeptics could certainly cite a range of potential psychological and sociological causes for such experiences. Those outside of our world are free to observe and judge for themselves. But my point is that psi isn’t just about the extreme and the strange. It can be an ordinary and consistently present part of one’s life.

Further, as the comments on Michael’s recent and excellent posts on Leslie Flint demonstrate, we who believe don’t believe everything (pace the Skeptics who enjoy portraying as credulous idiots. Crazy, too.). Yet, on the whole, I find reports of exceptional individual cases of psi to jibe with my own experience, and I think they are strong evidence for psi.

In conclusion

Based on my reading of psi laboratory research and exceptional cases of psi, as well as my own experience, I am 100% certain that psi is real and materialism is completely disproved and an obsolete worldview. Skeptics, however, will never be convinced.

If I am correct, that puts the unstoppable force of the truth of psi against the immovable object of the Skeptics’ belief system. What will be the end result of such an interaction?

I am going to go with a prediction that I have heard elsewhere and found convincing: Individual people and society as a whole will be convinced of the existence of the paranormal once someone is using it to make money. I don’t mean for readings but in the form of a process, product, or service that consistently works and that people want. At that point, the Skeptics will be forced to move, since money talks, and you-know-what walks. My guess is that 100 years will not pass without this happening, and it will probably happen much sooner than that.

 

Summerland, Dreamland, Disneyland

If we look at channeled descriptions of the afterlife, we observe a fair amount of consistency, but also notable omissions and anomalies. Even in the most detailed narratives, we get no clear sense of what people do all day. We are told about their pleasant lives spent relaxing in a garden, or attending a symphony, or visiting with friends in a parlor, but there is little indication of a daily routine. Occupations seem to be limited to caring for new arrivals in hospitals or sanatoriums, and engaging in creative or scientific work; but in neither case do we learn nearly as much as we would like. We are told of wonderful new inventions and artistic creations dreamed up by scientists and artists on the other side – scientists and artists who are apparently eager to share their work with the living – yet we are seldom privy to the details. Shakespeare may be writing his most glorious poetry in the afterlife, but no communicator sees fit to quote it for us. Edison may have come up with fascinating new inventions, but they remain unknown to us on earth. There are exceptions – the occasional medium who claims to receive symphonic compositions by the great masters, or someone who obtains a patent on an invention that came to him in a dream – but these are rare.

For the most part, our afterlife communicators seem unable to describe what they do to pass the time. They also seem curiously unable to describe their own homes. We are told that the houses can be quite large, yet the only rooms that are described, for the most part, are sitting rooms in which company can be entertained. What about all the other rooms? Is there a kitchen? Doubtful, since we are told that only the greenest of the new arrivals still feels the need to eat. A bathroom? Presumably not, since the astral body has no digestive system. A bedroom? Unlikely, since sleep is unnecessary and there is no nighttime. But what, then, are all those other rooms in those large houses? What purpose do they serve? What's in them?

Such omissions are explained by believers as resulting from difficulties in communication. But it seems odd that all the varied communications received throughout more than a century should suffer from the same difficulties. And it is especially odd that communications that are impressively detailed, even verbose, still fall short when it comes to describing major facets of the next life.

In considering this, it may be good to remember that almost all communicators who exhibit any intellectual advancement remark on this next phase of existence as, in some sense, an illusion. Perhaps the most notable example is the allegedly channeled F.W.H. Myers, speaking through Geraldine Cummins, who referred to the next plane as "the plane of Illusion," "Illusion-land," "Shadow Land," and "the Lotus Flower paradise."*

The lotus flower, it should be remembered, was said to be eaten by addicts who were transported into a blissful fantasy. Dictionary.com defines the term "lotus eater" as:

1. Classical Mythology. a member of a people whom Odysseus found existing in a state of languorous forgetfulness induced by their eating of the fruit of the legendary lotus; one of the lotophagi.

 

2. a person who leads a life of dreamy, indolent ease, indifferent to the busy world; daydreamer.

Myers, a classical scholar with a deep interest in Greek mythology, would have known both meanings.

Most often, this plane of "dreamy, indolent ease" and "languorous forgetfulness" is called Summerland, a term suggestive of an endless summer, which in turn suggests the long, lazy, timeless days of childhood. A common theme of the more advanced communicators is that Summerland is a fantasy or illusion created by the common subconscious memories, expectations, and desires of its inhabitants. Myers: "In Illusion-land you do not consciously create your surroundings through an act of thought. Your emotional desires, your deeper mind manufacture these without your being aware of the process."

Summerland is, in other words, a kind of shared dream. Now, a dream has a certain internal logic, yet there are typically omissions and even absurdities. Dreams involve sequential events but no clear sense of time. In a dream, we may engage in familiar activity repeatedly, even obsessively. We may find ourselves dreaming of the same behavior or situation over and over again. Dreams feel real and meaningful, but if, upon awakening, we try to retrieve the details, they often prove elusive or  nonsensical or trivial. Insights glimpsed in dreams, which seem extraordinarily important in the moment, are almost always exposed as trite when we recover them in our waking state.

All of this is arguably relevant to Summerland, as described by communicators. It has its own logic, but also its omissions; remember those mysterious extra rooms in people's houses, which are said to exist, but which are never described. Or remember the vagueness with which people address the question of their daily routine. The people of Summerland, and of lower astral planes, are said to engage in certain kinds of repetitive activity: on the lower levels, alcoholics continue to seek liquor, while the argumentative and violent continue to quarrel and fight; in Summerland, gardeners enjoy their gardens, artists paint their pictures, scientists work in their laboratories. Great insights are claimed, yet for the most part, the insights that come through the communications are disappointing and often dissolve into vague abstractions. Here's an example, again from the channeled Myers via Cummins:

Our surroundings are of a metaetheric character … It contains atoms of the very finest kind. They pass through your coarse matter. They belong to another state altogether …

Actually, though I call them atoms, they would appear to you to be of a fluid character …

This world beyond death … consists of electrons differing only in their fineness or increased vibratory quality from those known to earthly scientists. These very subtle units are extremely plastic and, therefore, can be molded by mind and will.

As physics goes, this is pretty thin soup.

What we see, I think, is that our communicators are very much like our dream selves. They are sure they have marvelous insights, but for the most part these don't hold up very well in the light of day. They talk blithely about all the wonderful things they do, but their actual activities seem confined to a few habitual behaviors learned on earth. They inhabit beautiful homes, but can't describe them. They hear beautiful music and exalted poetry, but can't convey it. Their scientists work in vague laboratories doing vague things – much as the average person today knows, in a general way, that scientists are smart people in lab coats who are surrounded by test tubes and cyclotrons and who come up with new discoveries of some sort.

It is, perhaps, rather childish. This fact leads skeptics, understandably enough, to dismiss the whole thing as patent silliness. But there's another way to look at it.

Dreamland – the country of sleep – is the playground of the subconscious. If hypnosis has taught us anything, it is that the subconscious is tractable and compliant. It believes what it is told. It has limited critical faculties. It is childlike and trusting.

Summerland, to the extent that it is a shared dream or a kind of mass self-hypnosis, reflects the same qualities. It seems simplistic because the subconscious mind is itself simplistic. It resists critical analysis because the subconscious mind falters in the face of critical analysis. It is persistent, because the subconscious mind sincerely believes whatever it is told and takes at face value whatever it is shown. 

The most fluent mediums and automatic writers enter into a trance in order to make contact with communicators. It is said that they must match the communicators' "vibration." It is not clear exactly what "vibration" means in this context, but one possible implication is that the communicators themselves are in a kind of trance state, at least while they are communicating, and maybe even when they are not. The people of Summerland, we are told, do not need to sleep. Is this because they are asleep already? The dreamer, typically, does not know that he dreams. The dream, for him, is reality, vivid and immediate. It persists in a sequential but curiously timeless fashion, seeming complete and logical despite its lacunae and contradictions. 

Summerland may be a world of sleepwalkers. A fantasy world, created by the combined intelligence of the subconscious minds of its inhabitants, minds that are imaginative but limited, more sensual than intellectual, trusting and not critical. A world created for rest and recuperation, for amusement and recreation, for exploration and learning – a kind of Disneyland of the Spirit. Just as Disneyland has its sub-theme parks  – Adventureland, Fantasyland, Tomorrowland, etc. – so Summerland has its own geography, its various communities organized around different belief systems. There appears to be a Christianland, complete with pearly gates and choirs of angels; Englishland, a bucolic countryside with thatched roof cottages; Ozland, an Emerald City of gleaming skyscrapers; and many more. And there are lower planes – what we might call Suicideland, where despairing souls linger in a self-imposed purgatory; and Warriorland, where ignorant armies clash by night; and Boozeland, where the search for hedonistic thrills continues pointlessly and insensibly.

Among spiritualists, it is generally understood that the lower planes are illusions experienced by people in a state of something like self-hypnosis or unhealthy self-absorption. But the same may be true of our friends in Summerland, as Myers and other advanced communicators have actually said. The full implications of their statement have perhaps not been appreciated.

In short, we sometimes wonder why communicators cannot convey trenchant details, stunning insights, and dizzying creative triumphs. We chalk it up to a bad connection, a translation error, a glitch. But maybe the explanation is simpler. Maybe, as far as Summerland is concerned, there is simply nothing more to convey.

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*All Myers-communicator quotes are taken from Chris Carter's Science and the Afterlife Experience, which in turn quotes Geraldine Cummins' books Beyond Human Personality and The Road to Immortality.

Stranger things

In the comments section of my recent post "A Close Shavian," Steve Hume recommended a turn-of-the-century investigation by magician and debunker David P. Abbott, who found himself at least somewhat at a loss to explain a direct-voice medium of his acquaintance. Happily, Abbott's book on the subject is sold by Amazon. The book is The History of a Strange Case, published by the Open Court Publishing Company in 1908.

Although available in book form, the piece is actually a monograph, originally printed in the magazine The Open Court in May and June 1908. It runs 50 pages and includes a postscript by Paul Carus, editor of Open Court. From Carus's remarks, it's pretty clear that Open Court was firmly devoted to debunking all spiritualist claims. Abbott himself, a confirmed skeptic, had used his deep knowledge of magic and mentalist tricks to debunk many mediums. But this case left him unsettled.

In 1906, Abbott received a letter from Mr. E.A. Parsons, later determined to be a well-known figure in the world of magic operating under the pseudonym Henry Hardin. The letter concerned a Mrs. Elizabeth Blake, described as "an elderly lady in a little town in Ohio" who offered her services as a medium. Despite his wide-ranging knowledge of magicians and the tools of their trade, Parsons was unable to determine how Mrs. Blake had fooled him – if indeed she was not the genuine article.

Mrs. Blake, Parsons recounted, "is the wife of an humble farmer and resides in an obscure country village [the town of Bradrick]. She has resided there all of her life and has reared a large family of children. She has never been over twenty miles from her home and has but little education. She is, however, very intelligent. She gave her sittings for a long time free of charge, and later began charging ten cents. She now charges one dollar, but does not insist on anything."

Her technique was unusual. She had the apparent ability to produce voices inside a sealed container. "She can use a glass lamp chimney or any closed receptacle … and I have heard the voices just as plainly coming out of the sound hole of a guitar that lay upon the table." But her usual mode of communication involved a special trumpet, or horn, that had been constructed for her. It was made of two metal cones attached at the large ends, with saucer-shaped pieces at the small ends.

"The trumpet is empty and can be examined by anyone," Parsons wrote. "The sitter takes one end of this trumpet and places it to his ear, while the lady does the same with the other end, placing it to her ear. At once the sitter plainly hears voices in the trumpet. These purport to be the voices of the spirits of his dead friends and relatives. They reply to any questions which he speaks out loud.… Now this is done in broad daylight, anywhere, even out-of-doors. I investigated this phenomenon seven hours altogether, giving it every possible test, but could obtain no clue to it.… The information which I received from the whispers was correct in every case. I had never seen the lady before, nor had I been in Ohio previously."

Abbott, intrigued, wrote to Mrs. Blake and invited her to visit him. In reply he received a letter from her physician, identified in Abbott's article only as Dr. X—. The doctor told Abbott that his patient had suffered an accident that left her crippled, making it impossible for her to travel. Abbott struck up a correspondence with Dr. X—, who was himself a believer in Mrs. Blake's mediumistic talents. In one sitting, the doctor, speaking to his purported father, asked about the time when the father took him off to college.

"When we walked towards the buildings, what was said to me by some of the students?"

"They yelled 'rat' at you."

"Spell that word," I requested, as I desired no misunderstanding.

"R-a-t," spelled the voice.

This was correct. As a young man, the doctor had attended a military school, where it was a tradition to shout "Rat!" at new arrivals.

Still more interested, Abbott decided to investigate in person. Discovering that Prof. James H. Hyslop,  Secretary of the American Society for Psychical Research, was also interested, he arranged to meet Hyslop in Ohio. Abbott also arranged, at the last minute, to have his cousin, George W. Clawson, accompany him. He thought it advisable to bring someone totally unknown to Dr. X— and to Mrs. Blake. Clawson traveled under an assumed name.

Abbott and Clawson had their first meeting with Mrs. Blake before Hyslop had arrived. Dr. X— swore that he had never mentioned Abbott's name to his patient, and that she knew of him and Clawson only as two friends from New York. The séance took place in daylight, and although Mrs. Abbott said that her recent illness had deprived her of power and she could "get nothing satisfactory any more," whispery voices did come through the trumpet. Much of the whispering was unintelligible, but there were a few meaningful exchanges. Abbott writes:

Mr. Clawson now took the trumpet. I may remark that although Mr. Clawson's parents, and also a little son who was never named, were dead, his whole heart was set on obtaining a communication from his daughter Georgia, who had recently died ... . This daughter had been very affectionate, and had always called her mother by the pet names of "Muz" and "Muzzie." She also generally called her father "Daddie" in a playful way. She had recently graduated from a school of dramatic art, and while there had become affianced to a young gentleman whose Christian name is "Archimedes." He is usually called "Ark" for short. Mr. Clawson had these facts in mind, intending to use them as a matter of identification.

A voice now addressed Mr. Clawson, saying, "I am your brother."

"Who else is there? Any of my relatives?" asked Mr. Clawson.

"Your mother is here," responded the voice.

"Who else is there?"

"Your baby."

"Let the baby speak and give its name," requested Mr. Clawson.

This was followed by many indistinct words that could not be understood. Finally a name was pronounced that Mr. Clawson understood to be "Edna." He had no child of that name; but in what followed, although his lips addressed the name "Edna," his whole mine addressed his daughter, "Georgia."

"Edna, if you are my daughter, tell me what was your pet name for me?" he asked.

"I called you Daddie," the voice replied.

"What was your pet name for your mother?"

"I called her Muz, and sometimes Muzzie," responded the voice.

As for Abbott, he received what could have been the name Grandma Daily, which was correct, but he wasn't absolutely sure he'd heard it right. He also heard the names Harvey, Dave, and then Dave Harvey, as well as the initials J.A., and possibly the name Asa. All of these names bore some connection to him, but the communications were so faint and indistinct that he couldn't be certain of what he was hearing. Overall, the sitting was intriguing but unsatisfactory.

When Hyslop arrived, the investigators returned to Mrs. Blake's cottage, this time holding a nighttime séance in the dark. Now the phenomena were considerably better.

We sat a very long time, and it seemed that nothing was to occur. Finally a blue light floated over the table between us, and another appeared near the floor close to where Mr. Clawson and Mr. Blake [the medium's husband] were sitting. The trumpet on the table was also lifted up over my head and dropped to the floor by my side.

Finally, the deep-toned voice of a man spoke. It appeared to be about a foot above and behind Mrs. Blake's head. The voice was melodious, soft, low in pitch, and very distinct. This is the voice that is claimed to be that of her dead son, Abe [serving as a control or spirit guide].

The voice said that the medium was too weak to provide good manifestations that evening. Nevertheless, the sitters continued to wait.

In a short time we heard a man's voice of a different tone entirely, which Dr. X— recognized as the voice of his grandfather. These voices were open,– that is, they were in no trumpet and were vocal. The tone of this last voice was that of a very old man, and the conversation was commonplace. Soon a much more robust and powerful man's voice spoke, and said: "James, we will give way to the others."…

I now took the trumpet. That the reader may fully understand what is to follow, I shall state a few facts. My Grandmother Daily, in the latter part of her life, resided in the country in Andrew County, Missouri. There my mother grew up. My grandmother died thirteen years ago. My mother's maiden name was "Sarah Frances Daly." She was always known to all as "Fannie Daily," and where she now resides is known to everyone as "Fannie Abbott." Even Mr. Clawson did not then know her correct Christian name.... She always called my sister "Adie" [short for Ada], and myself "Davey." This was many years ago.

A voice in the trumpet now addressed me, claiming to be that of my grandmother, Mrs. Dailey. [She conveyed her love to Abbott and to his mother and father.]

"You want me to tell my mother and my father that you talked to me?" I repeated, hardly knowing what to say.

"Yes, Davey, and tell Adie, too," replied the voice very plainly.… "Tell Adie, too," the voice again repeated. It certainly seemed incredible that this voice could manifest such intimate knowledge of my family's names, one thousand miles away. I thereupon decided to further test this knowledge.

"Grandma, what relation is Adie to me?" I quickly asked.

"Why, sister Adie, Davie. Tell sister Adie. You know what I mean – tell sister Adie."…

"Grandma, now if this is really you talking to me, you know my mother's first name. Tell it to me," I said.

"Sarah," answered the voice, quick as a flash. It was so quickly answered that the name "Sarah" had not entered my own consciousness at the instant.…

"What do you say it is?" I again asked.

"Sarah," again the voice plainly responded. 

[After this, a voice claiming to be that of Abbott's uncle David Patterson came through, calling himself Uncle Dave.]

One remarkable feature of the voice which claimed to be that of my Uncle David, was that it resembled his voice when alive, to an extent sufficient to call to my mind the mental picture of his appearance; and for an instant to give me that inner feeling of his presence that hearing a well-known voice always produces in one. I said nothing of this at the time. I may say that during all of our sittings, no other voice bore any resemblance to the voice of the person to whom it claimed to belong, so far as I was able to detect.

The next day there was another séance at the Blake house. Again Grandma Daily purportedly came through, this time communicating with Mr. Clawson.

"What is the name of Dave's mother?" now asked Mr. Clawson.

"Sarah," answered the voice.

"Yes, but she has another name. What is her other name?" asked Mr. Clawson.

"Daily."

"That is not what I mean. Give me her other name," continued Mr. Clawson.

"Abbott," answered the voice.

"That is not what I mean. She has another name. What do I call her when I speak to her? I call her by some other name. What do I call her?" insisted Mr. Clawson.

"Aunt Fannie. Don't you think I know my own daughter's name, George?" plainly spoke the voice, so that I could understand the words outside [i.e., without pressing an ear to the trumpet].

"I know you do, Grandma, but I wanted to ask you for the sake of proving your identity," continued Mr. Clawson.

"I want Davey to tell his mother and his father that he talked to me, that I am all right, and I don't want him to forget it. Davey, I want you to be good and pray, and meet me over here," continued the voice, speaking plainly so that I could hear outside.

When I used to visit my dear old grandmother many years ago, upon parting with me she would invariably shed tears, and say, "Davey, be good and pray, and meet me in heaven."…

With the exception of the words "over here" in place of the word "heaven," these last words spoken by the voice were the identical words which my grandmother spoke to me the last time I ever heard her voice.

Mrs. Blake switched to her other ear, saying that her arm was tired. She could evidently produce the voices regardless of which side of her head  was pressed to the trumpet. At this point, Abbott decided to let it be known that the name Edna, used in the previous séance for Mr. Clawson's daughter, was not correct. Shortly after, a whispered voice told Mr. Clawson, "Daddie, I am here."

"Who are you?" asked Mr. Clawson.

"Georgia," replied the voice.

"Georgia? Georgia, is this really you?" asked Mr. Clawson, with intense emotion and earnestness.

"Yes, Daddie. Didn't you think I knew my own name?" asked the voice.…

 "Georgia, what is the name of your sweetheart to whom you were engaged?" now asked Mr. Clawson. [The first reply could not be understood, so Mr. Clawson asked her to spell the name.]

"A-r-c, Ark," responded the voice, spelling out the letters and then pronouncing the name.

"Give me his full name, Georgia," requested Mr. Clawson.

"Archimedes," now responded the voice.

"Will you spell the name for me?"

[This was done, and the spelling was correct. Mr. Clawson asked where Ark was now.]

"He is in New York." This, Mr. Clawson afterwords informed me, was correct.…

Mr. Clawson was sufficiently overcome by the conversation that he had to leave the room. After ward, he was heard to remark, "I feel just as I did the day we buried her; and I have surely talked to my dead daughter this day."

That afternoon the group escorted Mrs. Blake into town where, Abbott tells us, "we conducted the most successful experiment of the end of our entire visit." Mr. Clawson asked Georgia for her middle name, which was correctly given as Chastine, which the voice spelled out correctly. He asked, "Where did you board when you went to school in Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts?"

"With Aunt Burgess," responded the voice.

"Tell me the name of your schoolmate friend," Mr. Clawson asked.

"Nellie Biggs," instantly responded the voice.

"With what friend did you go to school in Kansas City?" asked Mr. Clawson.

"Mary," responded the voice. [All of those answers were correct. The voice was then asked for  the name of her mother's mother.]

"Grandma Marcus is here," responded the voice. I will say that Mrs. Marquis had died but recently, and that her grandchildren always pronounced her name is if spelled "Marcus."...

The loudest voice addressed another visitor, who is identified only as "the governor of a state, who happened to be present," but whose name Abbott was not at liberty to give. This voice 

first spoke apparently in Mrs. Blake's lap, just as I was placing the trumpet to my ear. The voice was very deep-toned, and reverberated over the large room so loudly that Prof. Hyslop, who had stepped out, our friend's stenographer, and others entered and stood around the walls listening.

Abbott then heard from somebody purporting to be his grandmother, who sent this message to Abbott's still-living father: "Tell him that I am all right, and tell him not to be a 'doubting Thomas'."

"Grandma, that I may convince him that it was really you talk to me, tell me his name."

"George Alexander Abbott," spoke the voice, instantly and distinctly, so that all could hear.…  [This was correct.]

The admonition against being a doubting Thomas was repeated. Dr. X— said, "That is the first time I ever heard that expression used in any of Mrs. Blake's sittings." Abbott notes that both he and his eldest sister clearly remembered their grandmother saying to her father, "Oh, George, don't be a 'doubting Thomas'!" He says they heard this expression many times, but at the time of the sitting it had passed from his memory.

After a few more communications, none of them very significant, the séance ended. This also was the end of Abbott's experiments with Mrs. Blake, although Hyslop stayed on for further sittings. Afterward, Dr. X— contacted Abbott to describe an experiment that he had conducted on his own. He  obtained eight identical boxes and packed in each one a different article that had belonged to his late father. The boxes were then mixed and stacked, and his bookkeeper was asked to draw a box at random while the doctor's back was turned. "The object was to select a box the contents of which the doctor would not himself know." The doctor carried the box with him in his coat pocket when he went to the séance. Abbott tells us:

During this time the doctor requested his wife to ask the voice [of the doctor's father] what was in the former's pocket.…

"I am very anxious to have you do this so that I can report it to Prof. Heslop, and if you say so I will take the lid off the box to enable you to see better," spoke the Doctor.

"That is not necessary. I can see the contents as well with the lid on as with it off," responded the voice.

"Well, what is in it?" asked the Doctor.

"My pass I used to travel with," replied the voice. The Doctor's father used to have several annual passes. Some of them he never used, but one he used almost exclusively. Upon examining the box it was found to contain this pass.

Abbott was clearly unsettled  by the entire experience, and he does not claim to be able to explain it completely. He does, however, advance certain theories or hypotheses, to which he attaches varying degrees of certainty. How convincing these are is a debatable.

He is quite certain that Mrs. Blake produced the voices herself. He writes:

I am satisfied that the whispered words originate in her throat, and that the vocal voices are produced lower down in the chest. These sounds I believe are conducted from the throat through an abnormal Eustachian canal, to a point close to the tympanic membrane. The office of this membrane is to transmit sound waves; so that once they are there, the sound waves are easily transferred into the outer or auditory canal. How these sounds can be guided into either ear at will, and how the nostrils can prevent their exit, I can only surmise.

In other words, he believes that "these voices came out of the lady's ears." I am no expert in medical science or anatomy, but this strikes me as exceedingly unlikely, especially when we consider that some of the voices were loud enough to be heard from some distance away. Remember that the voice that addressed the unnamed governor in broad daylight, in an office in town (far from Mrs. Blake's home), was said to be loud enough to be heard from an adjacent room. It is not at all clear to me how a voice produced deep in the chest and somehow channeled through the eustachian tube and out through the ear could possibly be that loud, even assuming it is possible to channel vocalizations through the ears in the first place. To be honest, I find this entire theory patently absurd.

Nevertheless, Abbott pronounces himself content with it. It leaves him, however, with the problem of explaining how Mrs. Blake knew so much about him and Mr. Clawson, especially since the latter was traveling incognito. He admits that he has no definite explanation, but suggests that Mrs. Blake might be part of a network of mediums who exchanged information about their clients. Abbott could have been known to the mediumistic community in his capacity as a debunker. Mr. Clawson had visited mediums on prior occasions.

Of course, this assumes that Mrs. Blake, who lived in an isolated village and had little or no known contact with the wider world (she herself said she had never traveled more than two and a half miles from home in her lifetime), was able to obtain such information. It also assumes that the information gathered by such a network was extraordinarily detailed and precise, and that it could be conveyed to her very quickly — presumably between the first and second séances, both held on the same day (since she could not have known Clawson would be there until the first séance, and she gave him good evidence at the second séance). When we consider that Clawson did not give his real name at first, though on a subsequent day he incautiously revealed it, the puzzle of how Mrs. Blake could possibly obtain any information about him only deepens. 

Here are some excerpts of Abbott's hypotheses, which he himself does not seem to be very confident in:

That the name "Brother Eddy" was a guess is quite improbable, but of course could be possible; while it would have been a possibility for the name "Grandma Daily" to have been secured in advance.…

In regard to the pet names, "Muz," "Muzzie," and "Daddie," given Mr. Clawson at the first sitting, only the possibility of a misinterpretation of sounds can be suggested. The names given me, "Dave Harvey," "Asa," and my own name, belong to those that could have been secured in advance.…

[At the second sitting] I secured the names "Sarah" and "Ada," together with the correct relationship of the latter. There was no misinterpretation of sounds. These names belong to those that it would have been possible to have secured in advance, but at the time I was so thoroughly convinced that such was not the case, that I was greatly startled.…

"The names "Lizzie" or "Lissie," and "Aunt Fannie," given Mr. Clawson at this sitting, are among those that could have been secured in advance. As to the names "Georgia" and "Archimedes," with the latter's correct location at the time, together with the correct spelling of his name, I can offer nothing satisfactory; for I do not think there was any misinterpretation of sounds.…  My grandmother's parting request may be a phrase generally used by the voices….

This last point refers to the words "Be good and pray, and meet me over here," which were almost identical to an expression Abbott's grandmother always used when they parted, and indeed used the very last time he saw her. To chalk this up as a "stock phrase" (Abbott's term) used by cheating mentalists strikes me as pretty desperate.

[In the afternoon sitting on the second day] the names "Chastine," "Aunt Burgess," "Nellie Biggs," "Mary," "Grandma Marcus," my father's correct name, and also my wife's first name, were given. In addition to this was the name "Dody," the request from my father "Not to be a 'doubting Thomas'" and the statement that my wife's mother is alive. Some of these things Mr. Clawson did not know, and a number of them I did not know. We must, however, consider as a possibility that [Mr. Clawson] might have imparted certain information to Mrs. Blake during his fifteen-minute ride [to the office in town]. He assured me that he did not, and he is certainly sincere in his statement.… In case he did so, the matter evidently passed from his memory very quickly, for he was positive that such was not the case.

In other words, the sitting can be explained only if Clawson acted like a complete idiot, blurting out reams of personal information, and then immediately forgot everything he had said, even though it all came up in the séance a short time later. 

Abbott concludes that he cannot assert that any fraud was used, at least concerning the information provided, and that he can only suggest possibilities. "I must still leave the case to a certain extent shrouded in mystery."

The book's short postscript is less open to the idea of mystery. Paul Carus tells us that the Blake case  is "not so extraordinary as to preclude probabilities which would reduce the mysterious facts to mere stultificaions without even throwing any suspicion upon the honesty of the main actors concerned." In other words, he feels the whole thing is pretty easy to explain, even though the actual investigator and confirmed skeptic, David Abbott, doesn't agree.

Carus concludes with an airy wave of the hand: "…it would not be difficult to point out several explanations which are possible and would dispel the faintest shadow of mystery." Sadly, he does not enlighten us as to what those simple explanations might be.