Adventurings in the Psychical

by H. Addington Bruce

“His memory, however, was decidedly failing him, and he was good enough to write to another brother, Frank, living in Cornwall, an old sea captain, and ask if he had any better remembrance of certain facts—of course not giving any inexplicable reason for asking. The result of this inquiry was triumphantly to vindicate the existence of Smith’s field as a place near their home, where they used to play in Barking, Essex; and the killing of a cat by another brother was also recollected; while of the swimming of the creek, near a mill-race, full details were given, Frank and Jerry being the heroes of that foolhardy episode.”

Sir Oliver Lodge himself appears to believe that he was actually in communication, through Mrs. Piper, with his dead Uncle Jerry; and by spiritists generally this is alluded to as a characteristic instance impossible of explanation on the theory of telepathy between living minds. But it is pertinent to point out that possibly, in his childhood, Sir Oliver may have heard his uncles, in some moment of reminiscence, discussing these very incidents. He would naturally have forgotten the episode, so far as conscious recollection of it was concerned; but he would none the less have retained some memory of their conversation in his subconsciousness, whence Mrs. Piper could have gained knowledge of it telepathically. And, even had he never heard of the incidents, they might indeed have been transmitted to him telepathically from the surviving uncles, and been by him retransmitted to Mrs. Piper.

This last possibility, involving as it does telepathy between more than two persons, may seem to be far-fetched. But there is plenty of evidence that telepathy of this sort—known technically as telepathie à trois—is an actuality. I have in mind one particularly interesting case studied by Mr. Andrew Lang, the brilliant essayist and psychical researcher. It concerns a crystal-gazer named Miss Angus.

“Again and again,” to give Mr. Lang’s own words, “Miss Angus, sitting with man or woman, described acquaintances of theirs but not of hers, in situations not known to the sitters but proved to be true to fact. In one instance, Miss Angus described doings, from three weeks to a fortnight old, of people in India, people whom she had never seen or heard of, but who were known to her sitter. Her account, given on a Saturday, was corroborated by a letter from India, which arrived next day, Sunday. In another case she described—about ten P. M.—what a lady, not known to her, but the daughter of a matron present, who was not the sitter, had been doing about four P. M. on the same day. Again, sitting with a lady, Miss Angus described a singular set of scenes much in the mind, not of her sitter, but of a very unsympathetic stranger, who was reading a book at the other end of the room.

“I have tried every hypothesis, normal and not so normal, to account for these and analogous performances of Miss Angus. There was, in the Indian and other cases, no physical possibility of collusion; chance coincidence did not seem adequate; ghosts were out of the question, so was direct clairvoyance. Nothing remained for the speculative theorizer but the idea of cross currents of telepathy between Miss Angus, a casual stranger, the sitters, and people far away, known to the sitters or the stranger, but unknown to Miss Angus.

“Now,” adds Mr. Lang, in a paragraph that every attendant at spiritistic séances would do well to learn by heart, “suppose that Miss Angus, instead of dealing with living people by way of crystal-visions, had dealt by way of voice or automatic handwriting, and had introduced a dead ‘communicator.’ Then she would have been on a par with Mrs. Piper, yet with no aid from the dead.”

That automatists “read the mind” of their sitters, or draw upon the contents of their own subconsciousness in obtaining the facts which they give out as coming from the spirit world, is further evident from experiments in automatic writing conducted by several American and English psychical researchers.[24]

But when they are genuine automatists, it would be unjust to accuse them of conscious deception in attributing their communications to discarnate spirits. The trance state into which they usually fall is an abnormal condition, and is not unlike, if not identical with, the hypnotic state. As will be shown in detail later, one of the distinctive characteristics of hypnosis is the preternaturally increased suggestibility of the person hypnotized. He will accept and act upon the slightest suggestion of the hypnotist, no matter how ridiculous and absurd the suggestion may be, so long as it is not repugnant to his moral sense. Moreover, he can be induced to think that he is some one other than his real self, and will often assume the traits of the suggested personality with a fidelity that is astounding.

So, likewise, we must believe, with the automatist, who will impersonate anybody suggested—albeit suggested quite unconsciously—by the sitters, whether it be the “spirit” of a Greek philosopher, an Indian chief, or the deceased friend of some one present. Usually he is so deeply entranced as to have no knowledge of what he is doing, just as the hypnotized subject remains in ignorance of the actions he carries out in response to the operator’s suggestions. But there is a record of at least one instance in which the automatist, an amateur psychical researcher named Charles H. Tout, of Vancouver, clearly recognized that his various impersonations were suggested to him by the spectators.