A number of diagrams, roughly drawn off-hand at the time, were shown to the agent or precipitant, Mr. G., the subject, or percipient, a lady, being blind-fold. During the process of transference, the agent looked steadily and in silence at the drawing, the subject meanwhile sitting opposite to him, and behind the stand on which the drawing lay, so that it was entirely out of her range of vision had her eyes not been blind-folded.
The agent stopped looking at the drawing when the subject professed herself ready to make the attempt to reproduce it. The time occupied thus was from half a minute to two or three minutes. Then the handkerchief was removed, and she drew with a pencil what had occurred to her mind.
RESULTS OF EXPERIMENTS IN THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE.
RESULTS OF EXPERIMENTS IN THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE.
The reproductions were made generally without the agent following or watching the process. We reproduce several of the attempts here, giving both the successes and the failures. Even the failures show the effect Mr. G. produced upon the reader’s mind.
The experiments conducted so successfully in the family of the Rev. Mr. Creery, of Boston, and made public by Professor Barrett in The Journal of Psychical Research, show to what extent thought-reading may be successfully carried on in the quietude and confidence of a well-regulated family.
The mode of procedure adopted by Professor Barrett to test the faculty as possessed by the children was as follows:—“One of the children,” says Professor Barrett, “was sent into an adjoining room, the door of which I saw was closed. On returning to the sitting-room, and closing the door also, I thought upon some object in the house, fixed upon at random. Writing the name down, I showed it to the family present, the strictest silence being preserved throughout. We then all silently thought of the name of the thing selected. In a few seconds the door of the adjoining room was heard to open, and after a short interval the child would enter the sitting-room, generally speaking, with the object selected. No one was allowed to leave the sitting-room after the object had been fixed upon, and no communication with the child was conceivable, as her place was often changed. Further, the only instructions given to the child were to fetch some objects in the house that I would think upon and, together with the family, silently keep in mind, to the exclusion as far as possible of all other ideas.”
Now, if Professor Barrett had told the children to select a word, and upon coming into the room were to spell or state what the word was, I question if the experiments would have been so successful. The articles thought of, whether a hair brush, an orange, wine glass, apple, or a playing card, were of such a nature that a definite picture or image of the thing thought of could be formed in the mind. The father, mother, and even Professor Barrett, seem to have been especially in rapport with the little sensitives, and thus all the more readily were they able to transmit the mental picture of the articles selected. Trick or collusion in this case is absolutely out of the question. It would be interesting to know if these young sensitives, who were so bright in 1881, still retain, or have increased or lost, their powers.