The Sinclair-Irwin Long-distance Group of Experiments
On July 8, 1928, the first formal set of experiments with drawings began, by arrangement between Mrs. Sinclair and the husband of her younger sister; Robert L. Irwin, “a young American business man, priding himself on having no ‘crank’ ideas.” The arrangement was that at a stated hour Mr. Irwin should seat himself in his home in Pasadena, make a drawing, and then fix his mind upon the drawing from fifteen to twenty minutes. At the same hour in her home at Long Beach, twenty-five or thirty miles distant as the crow flies, Mrs. Sinclair proposed to lie on a couch, in semi-darkness and with closed eyes, compose her mind according to the rules she had by this time evolved, and after coming to a decision, make a drawing corresponding with her mental impression. It appears that there was one such experiment on July 8, two on the 9th, two on the 10th and one each on the 11th and 13th.
We have here, then, a set of seven experiments under ideal conditions. Since something like thirty miles separated the parties, there could be no contact, no “involuntary whispering” that would carry that far and no conceivable other source of information or material for surmise.
1. On July 8, Irwin drew a chair with horizontal bars at the back (Fig. [16]). Mrs. Sinclair drew first a chair with horizontal bars (Fig. [16a]), then a chair with vertical ones. And she distinctly set down on the same paper her sense of greater satisfaction with her first drawing, her feeling that the second was not as “Bob” had drawn it, and her feeling that the second may really express the foot of his bed. She also set down that his drawing was on “green paper.” Here is a remarkable combination of impressions: (a) his drawing on green paper, (b) seen as a chair “on his paper,” (c) his chair with horizontal bars, (d) her chair with vertical bars perhaps derived from “his bed-foot.” Even had there been, as there was not, a pre-understanding that some object familiar in daily life was to be drawn, to hit exactly the same one would be very unlikely. To do this and also to get the unusual color of the paper he drew on is remarkable. To get all the enumerated particulars exactly correct is incalculably beyond chance expectation. For he drew a chair, on green paper, with horizontal bars, then gazed at the chair through the vertical bars of his bed! * * * [Refer to Figs. 16 and 16a and experiment.]
She added that she sees a star and straight lines, and draws the star and the lines, horizontal like those of the chair.
There are several partial correspondences besides those we have enumerated. Bob did sit at the northeast corner of the dining-room table. He faced a sideboard (but apparently did not take anything out of it) where were silver (not glass) candlesticks; there is a star on the back of the chair; whether any white object was in front of him as he sat at the table, before lying down on the bed, is not reported. But it is to be presumed that Mrs. Sinclair was familiar with his room and furniture, and these particulars add comparatively little. Once she got the chair, subconscious memory might supply the star; but it would not give any clue to the green paper or to his looking through vertical bars.
2. On July 9, at the stated hour, Bob drew a watch (Fig. [17]).[[8]] First Mrs. Sinclair drew a chair, but cancelled it with the words then written down, “but do not feel it is correct.” Then she drew Figure 17a. * * *
This is not a success, but the flower which is not a flower, the petals, which are not petals and should be more uniform, the “metal,” the “wire” (adumbration of the hands?), the “glass circle,” the bridging across the extremities of the “petals” as if from an urge toward making a circle, the black center corresponding with the center post of a watch, taken together are very suggestive. Other impressions resulted in the addition of an ellipse, a drinking-glass and a glass pitcher, and Bob did have in front of him a glass bowl of goldfish, which may have furnished a telepathic hint, but this is doubtfully evidential.
3. Another experiment was scheduled for the same day. Bob made an elaborate drawing of a telephone receiver, transmitter, dial, cord and all. The top part, the transmitter, as drawn, is strikingly like a round, black, glass ink-bottle, seen with mouth facing the spectator. Mrs. Sinclair made four drawings. The first looks like such an ink-bottle seen from the side, and she writes, “Ink bottle?” The second drawing shows a twisted line attached to a triangle, reminding one of the twisted telephone cord attached to a sharp angle of the base, and the third repeats the twisting line. The fourth inverted is considerably like the base of the telephone. The correspondences are very suggestive.
4. On the 10th, Bob drew, on the back of the paper having the telephone drawing (he should not have done this), which he of course saw anew, what is probably intended to represent a square frame containing a picture, both very black. The percipient first drew two lines forming an angle and placed in relation to it about as the dial of the telephone is placed in relation to the angle of the telephone base, a black disc. Her next and last drawing was a circle containing about a dozen round spots, as the circular dial of the telephone contains eight spots.
5. On the 10th, also, Bob drew a pair of scissors (Fig. [18]), and the percipient made two attempts which, taken together, certainly do sense its parts (Figs. 18a and 18b).
6. On the 11th, Bob, whose health had been in bad shape for several years, made a circle with a compass, of course producing a hole in the center of it. And this is what Mrs. Sinclair got (Fig. 19a). There is a circle—in fact, a number of them concentrically arranged—and there is a central dot corresponding to the mark made by the compass leg. But other impressions came to Mrs. Sinclair, accompanied by poignant emotions, and she seemed to see and tried to draw a spreading stain of blood. She wrote her feeling and her conviction: “All this dark like a stain,—feel it is blood; that Bob is ill, more than usual.” She did not draw, but directly told her husband, “I wanted to draw a little hill.” And why all this? It transpired that while Bob was making the circle he was in a state of distress, for, he afterwards testified, “I discovered that I had a hemorrhoid, and couldn’t put my mind on anything but the thought, ‘My God, my lungs—my kidneys—and now this!’” It is hardly necessary, perhaps, to point out that a hemorrhoid is like a little hill and that one is very likely to bring on hemorrhage,[[9]] so that this possibility was probably in Bob’s mind.
Had Mrs. Sinclair been in a laboratory with one professor of psychology or of physics, and her brother-in-law in another laboratory with another, not all the apparatus of both laboratories nor all the ingenuity of both professors could have made the conditions more rigid, or tested the essence of the matter farther. There would simply have been the testimony of four persons, two at each end, and that is exactly what there is. Bob’s affliction was of sudden occurrence, and the particular terms of Mrs. Sinclair’s impressions could not have been produced by any hint of knowledge. His willingness in the interest of psychic research, in order that this remarkable demonstration of telepathy should not be lost, to put aside squeamishness, is a rebuke to the human violets who shrink, for no intelligible reason from allowing evidence to be used which relates to them.
7. On the 13th, Bob drew a table fork (Fig. [1]), and Mrs. Sinclair, at the same hour, many miles away, drew nothing but wrote, “See a table fork. Nothing else.” (Fig. [1a].)
These seven experiments[[10]] are all that were undertaken between Mrs. Sinclair and her brother-in-law. This is unfortunate, for it certainly appears from this short but remarkable series as though they were remarkably suited to each other, for reasons we cannot yet fathom, for long-distance experiments. But “he found them a strain,” and since his health was so poor and strains were most undesirable, we cannot blame him for discontinuing them.
One pauses to consider the words “he found them a strain.” May it be that when experiments reveal thought-transference the agent generally does feel a strain beyond that involved in merely gazing at an object and wishing (or willing, or what you please) that the percipient may get the idea of it. If so, it would seem to imply, not necessarily some energy proceeding outwardly, but at any rate some process going on within which causes the special exhaustion. But no statistics bearing on this question have been gathered from successful agents. It is one of the many sorts of data which must be accumulated in the future.
Mr. Irwin and his wife made corroborating affidavits, as follows:
To whom it may concern:
Robert L. Irwin, having been duly sworn, declares that he has read the portion of manuscript by Upton Sinclair dealing with his experiments in telepathy with Mary Craig Sinclair, and that the statements made therein having to do with himself are true according to his clear recollection. The drawings attributed to him were produced by him in the manner described, and are recognized by him in their photographic reproductions. The experiments were conducted in good faith, and the results may be accepted as valid.
[Signed] Robert L. Irwin.
To whom it may concern:
Dollie Kimbrough Irwin, having been duly sworn, declares that she has read the portion of manuscript by Upton Sinclair dealing with experiments in telepathy by her sister, Mary Craig Sinclair, and having to do with her husband, Robert L. Irwin; that she was present when the drawings were made and the tests conducted, and also when the completed drawings were produced and compared. The statements made in the manuscript are true according to her clear recollection, and the experiments were made in good faith and with manifest seriousness.
[Signed] Dollie Kimbrough Irwin.
These statements were severally.
“Subscribed and sworn to before me this 26th day of July, 1929, [Signed] Laura Unangst, Notary Public in and for the County of Denver, Colorado.”