THE EVOLUTION OF A PSYCHICAL
RESEARCHER
Probably few of us keep a diary nowadays. I don’t. But I somehow got into the habit, soon after I became interested in psychical things, of jotting down in a notebook the conclusions at which I had arrived—or the almost complete puzzlement in which I found myself, as the case might be. Glancing recently through these records of my pilgrimage, it seemed to me that a sketch of it might be of some interest or amusement to others.
Professor William James says in his Talks to Teachers that it is very difficult for most people to accept any new truth after the age of thirty; and that indeed old-fogeyism may be said to begin at twenty-five. It is perhaps therefore not surprising that, coming fresh to the subject at thirty-two—in 1905—I found the struggle to psychical truth a very long and arduous affair. Having been brought up on the ministrations of a hell-fire-preaching Nonconformist pastor whose theology made me into a very vigorous Huxleyan agnostic, I was biased against anything that savoured of “religion,” and moreover “spiritualism” was unscientific and absurd. So I thought, in my ignorance; for I knew nothing whatever of the evidence on which spiritualistic beliefs are based.
However, I fortunately ran up against hard facts which soon cured me of negative dogmatism. I became acquainted with a medium who satisfied me that she could diagnose disease, or rather her medical “control” could, from a lock of the patient’s hair; and this without any information whatever being given. Also that the diagnosis often went beyond the knowledge of the sitter, thus excluding telepathy from anyone present or near. But this did not prove that the control was a spirit, so I turned to other investigations.
First, I set myself to “read up”. I feel sure that this is the best course for beginners to adopt, after once achieving real open-mindedness. It enables one to investigate with proper scientific care when opportunity arises, and with much better chance of securing good evidence. Without this preparation, an investigator has little idea how to handle that delicate machine called a medium, and indeed no amount of reading will entirely equip the experimenter, for there are many things which only experience can teach. Also, without this preparation, the investigator will be liable either to give things away by talking too much, or will create an atmosphere of suspicion and discomfort by being too secretive. It takes some practice to achieve an open and friendly manner while never losing sight of the importance of imparting no information that would spoil possible evidence. This of course is desirable from the medium’s point of view as well as that of the sitter. It is hard on a medium if, for example, a really supernormally-got name does not count because the sitter himself had let it slip.
I think my reading began with Light and some of Mr E. W. Wallis’s books, but I soon found my way to the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, and recognised that here was what I was seeking. I cannot sufficiently express my admiration, which is as great as ever, for such masterly pieces of evidence as, for instance, Dr Hodgson’s account of sittings with Mrs Piper, in volume 13. If we were perfectly logical beings, without prejudice, that account ought to convince anybody; certainly it ought to convince the reader of the operation of something supernormal, and it ought to go a long way towards excluding telepathic theories and rendering the spirit explanation the most reasonable one. But we are not logical beings. We require to be battered for a long time by fact after fact before we will admit a new conclusion. I remember saying, as indeed I noted down in the diary mentioned, that a few of these volumes, with Myers’s Human Personality, left me in the curious position of being able to say that, though I was not convinced, I felt that logically I ought to be, for the evidence seemed irrefragable. Then I read Crookes’ Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism, and my logical agreement was accentuated, for Sir William Crookes was my scientific Pope, in consequence of my having worked from his chemical writings, and having an immense admiration for his mind and method. But my actual inner conviction was not much changed. Kant says somewhere that we may test the strength of our beliefs by asking ourselves what we would bet on them. At this point I had not got to the stage of being prepared to bet much on the truth of the survival of human beings or the possibility of communicating with them if they did survive. I thought the case was logically proved, but I didn’t feel it in my bones, as the phrase goes. For this, personal experience is necessary; at least it is for an old fogey of over thirty, with my particular build of mind.
And I was fortunately able to get this experience. One of the two best-known mediums in the North of England, Mr A. Wilkinson, happened to live only a few miles away, though he was and is generally away from home, speaking for spiritualist societies from Aberdeen to Exeter, and being booked over a year ahead. However, I was able to get an introduction to him through friends who also carried out investigations with him (described in my New Evidences in Psychical Research), and since then, with intermissions due mainly to ill-health, I have had friendly sittings with him continuously. To him I owe my real convictions, and for this I cannot adequately thank him. Without his kindness I could never have achieved certainty; for owing to a damaged heart I could not get about to interview mediums, and there was no other medium within reasonable distance. Besides, Mr Wilkinson has stretched a point in my case, for he does not give private sittings, preferring to confine himself to platform work; and I suppose he makes an exception in my case in view of my inability. I here once more thank him for all he has done for me.
At my first sitting with him he described and named my mother and other relatives, whom he saw apparently with me. I had no reason to believe that he had any normal knowledge of these people; certainly I had never mentioned them to him, and it was in the last degree unlikely that anyone else had. My mother had been dead twenty-two years, and was not at all a prominent person. Moreover, he got by automatic writing a signed message from her, giving the name of the house in which we lived at the time of her death, but which we had left eleven years later. This seemed to be given by way of a test. At later sittings my father and other relatives manifested, with names and identifying detail, and the proof began to be almost coercive. The evidence went beyond any possibility of the medium’s normal knowledge, and was characteristic of the different communicators in all sorts of subtle ways. Telepathy alone remained as a possible alternative to the spirit explanation. Then came a peculiar phase, as if there were a definite plan on the part of some of my friends on the other side for the purpose of utterly convincing me by bringing evidence which could not possibly be accounted for by any supposition of a reading of my own mind. A spirit friend of mine would turn up, bringing with him a spirit whom I had never heard of, and saying that he was a friend of his; and on inquiry I would find that it was so—and sometimes it needed a great deal of inquiry, which made it all the better evidence, for it showed how difficult it would have been for the medium to obtain the information; though indeed at this stage the evidence had forced me past crude suspicions of that sort. On other occasions unknown spirits would appear, and I would find that they belonged to the last visitor I had had. Several incidents of this kind are described in my book Psychical Investigations. After some years of this kind of experience I became fully satisfied that the spirit explanation was the only reasonable one. Some writers, like Miss Dougall in a recent volume of essays called Immortality, invent a complicated hypothesis according to which my mind photographs the mind of a visitor and the medium on his next visit develops and reads off the photograph; but I confess that my credulity does not stand the strain put upon it by such a hypothesis. Besides, I have lately had—as if to get round even such tortured theories as this—evidence giving details which have not been known to any person I have ever met. I was told to write to a certain friend of mine, father of the ostensible communicator. The facts were unknown even to him, but he was able to verify them completely; and they were characteristic and evidential of the identity of the ostensible communicator.
If all my results were of the kind I have had through Mr Wilkinson the case would, for me, be so utterly and overwhelmingly proved that doubt would be absurd. But this is too much to expect. I have had many other mediums here, with varying success, but nothing approaching Mr Wilkinson’s. In many cases it is fairly obvious that the medium’s subliminal—or the control’s imagination—has been doing part of the business, no doubt unknown to the medium’s normal consciousness. But in no case have I had any indication of fraud. This seems sufficient answer to Mr Edward Clodd’s credulous acceptance of the theory of a Blue-Book and inquiry system which enables mediums to post themselves up about likely sitters. It would be the easiest thing in the world for an imitation medium to learn enough about me to give what would seem on the face of it a fairly “good” sitting. But this is never the case. Either the medium fails or he is so successful that normal knowledge is ruled out. On Mr Clodd’s theory, I ought to have neither of these extremes; I ought to have no failures, and no results going beyond what inquiry could produce. But I need not labour this point, for Mr Clodd has recently confessed his almost absurd innocence of any first-hand experience. In a letter to the International Psychic Gazette for April, 1918, he said he had been to a sitting about fifty years ago, but he does not remember much about what happened! Yet he sets up as an authority on this branch of experimental science! It is like someone writing on chemistry after being in a laboratory once, fifty years ago.
Some of my most curious experiences, concerning which I have not yet published anything in detail, have been in connexion with crystal vision. I happen to know a sensitive—not a professional medium or even a spiritualist—who has physical-phenomena powers of very unusual and indeed probably unique type. Not only can she see in the crystal and get evidential messages by writing seen therein, but the writing or pictures are visible to anyone present. I have seen them myself. As many as six people at a time, myself among them, have seen the same thing, and not one of the six was of suggestible type or had had any hallucinations. All were middle-aged, except one young lieutenant, and we were indeed a rather exceptionally un-neurotic and stodgy lot. But though the things seem objective—I am going to try to photograph them, also the sensitive, in the hope of confirming the Crewe phenomena—they are somehow more or less influenced by the sensitive’s own mind, without her conscious knowledge; for, e.g., in one message, purporting to come from my father, I was addressed as Arthur, a name which would be natural to the medium who knows me mostly from printed matter and a few letters, but which is entirely inappropriate in relation to my father. Yet a good deal of evidence of identity has come through this sensitive, and this “mixture” does not invalidate the case. Again, a queer feature of this sensitive’s powers is that lost objects are frequently found as a result of instructions given in the crystal; and in many of these cases it seems certain that the position of the lost object could not have been known to any incarnate mind, or of course it would not have been left there. In one case it was a valuable ruby; in several others it was Treasury notes. This sensitive also is a medium for very good raps, which all present can hear quite distinctly and which show intelligence, answering questions and so forth.