Miss G.'s report is as follows:—
"Experiment last night (9-5-92) most unsatisfactory. Saw only a glow of light and once for a few seconds a figure [of a vase]. Some minutes after 11.30 (time for conclusion of experiment) it seemed as if the door of my room were open, and on the landing I saw a very large dog, moving as though it had just come upstairs. I cannot conceive what suggested this, nor can I understand why I thought of Laddie during time of experiment. I do not think we have mentioned him recently. My door was locked as usual. "L. G."
The sixth experiment (15th May 1892) was, in the words of Mr. Kirk's contemporary report, "devoted to making hypnotic passes, done with great energy and concentration of mind. The passes were made, not only over Miss G.'s [imagined] face and arms, but specially over her hands," with the view of inducing hypnotic sleep.
Miss G. reports that she "fell asleep before the time arranged had expired. But it was only to awake again very soon, through dreaming I was in a basement room ... making frantic efforts to strike a match, prevented doing so by some one behind clasping my wrists. The sensation was so unpleasantly real that it awoke me." The time fixed for the experiment had then passed. This was the only occasion in this series on which Miss G. went to sleep during an experiment.
In the seventh experiment (5th June 1892) Mr. Kirk again made passes to send Miss G. to sleep. Miss G., on her side, saw only something "like the varied but regular movements one sees in turning a kaleidoscope, only without the colouring; it was simply luminous, and lasted more or less distinctly from 15 to 20 minutes." This impression may conceivably have been due, as Mr. Kirk suggests, to the regular movements of his hands in making the hypnotic passes.
In estimating the value of the coincidences between Mr. Kirk's thought and Miss G.'s impressions in the fourth and fifth trials, it should not be overlooked that the percipient's impressions were not vague images, such as are wont to crowd through our minds on the near approach of sleep, but clear-cut visions, approximating to visual hallucinations.
No. 39.—By MR. KIRK and MISS PRICKETT.
Mr. Kirk conducted another short series of experiments in March 1892, with Miss L. M. Prickett, the distance between agent and percipient being about twelve miles. The results are given below. It is to be noted that the percipient's impressions in this series seem generally to have been deferred. But in weighing the amount of correspondence between the diagrams and the percipient's reproductions, it should be observed that of the four diagrams employed, three were reproduced with substantial accuracy, and in their chronological order; and that even on the second and third evenings the percipient's impressions—rectilinear figures inscribed in a circle—bore a general resemblance to the diagram actually selected. It is perhaps unfortunate that three out of the four diagrams included circles or figures akin to circles, but as the percipient had not seen any of the diagrams beforehand, this circumstance does not in any way invalidate the results, though it weakens the argument against chance-coincidence.