Telepathy and the Subliminal Self

by R. Osgood Mason

This little toy was called Planchette, and wonderful tales were told of its strange performances when rightly used. Evenly adjusted upon a plain wood table, if a properly-constituted person placed his or her finger-tips lightly upon its surface, it soon began to move about, without any muscular effort or any wish or will on the part of the operator; a broad, smooth sheet of paper being placed beneath it upon the table, figures, words, and sentences were plainly traced by the pencil, all in the style of a veritable oracle, and greatly to the delight of the curious, the wonder of the superstitious, and the mystification of people generally.

Not every one, however, could command the services of the modern oracle; only to the touch of a certain few was it responsive; to the many it was still and silent as a sphinx. One in ten, perhaps, could obtain a scrawl; one in twenty, intelligible sentences, and one in a hundred could produce remarkable results. Few persons witnessing its performances under favorable circumstances failed to be interested, but different people looked at it from quite different standpoints. The habitual doubter saw in it only a well-managed trick, which, however, he failed to detect; the spiritualist saw undoubted evidence of spiritual manifestations, while the great majority of common-sense people saw writing done, evidently without will or effort on the part of the writer, producing messages of every grade, from the most commonplace twaddle, foolishness, and even falsehood, to the exhibition of intelligence of a high order, a sparkling wit, and a perception of events, past, present, and sometimes even of those still in the future, most acute and unusual. What was the cause of these involuntary movements, or whence came the messages written, they did not know, and few even cared to speculate.

That was twenty-five years ago, and the two theories already alluded to were about the only ones adduced to account for the phenomena. Dr. Carpenter’s theory of “unconscious cerebration” and “unconscious muscular action” did not cover the ground; there was altogether too much cerebration not to have a consciousness connected with it in some way. The theory did not cover the facts. Twenty-five years have failed to detect the long-talked-of trick of the skeptic; they have also failed to substantiate the claim of spiritualists, and Planchette-writing is almost as much a mystery as ever.

Fairly studied, then, what does Planchette really do? From a physical standpoint its performances are simply automatic writing or drawing. To deny the automatic character of the movements of Planchette at this day is simply absurd. That writing can be produced with it voluntarily, no one doubts, but that it generally is produced automatically, that is, without the choice or control of the writers, and without their knowledge of what is being written, it would be waste of time here to attempt to prove; the theory of fraud is untenable, and the real question at issue is the psychical one, namely, whence come the messages which it brings?

These messages may be divided into three general classes: (1) Those which are trivial or irrelevant. (2) Those which show intelligence and have some unmistakable relation to the subject of which they purport to give information, but all of which is known either to the writers or some person present. (3) Those which bring, or profess to bring, information unknown in any way, either to the writer or any person present.

The first of these divisions need not detain us, though it contains a very large share of all the messages received, as it simply illustrates the fact of automatism, which is equally well illustrated in the other classes of messages, which are of a more interesting character. The second class, namely, messages which show intelligence and have an unmistakable relation to the subject concerning which information is asked, and yet contain nothing beyond the knowledge of the writers or of persons present, is also very large.

The following is a sketch of my own first experience with Planchette. I may remark that subsequent trials brought out the fact that for myself alone Planchette will do nothing; it will not even move a hair’s-breadth; but when, as is often the case, two persons are needed for success, I am often selected by Planchette to assist when it is consulted in the matter. On one occasion, I was calling at a friend’s house, in the spring of 1868. Planchette was then much in vogue, and one stood on a side-table in the room. A young daughter of my friend—a school-girl fifteen or sixteen years of age—remarked that Planchette would move and sometimes even write for her, and she asked me to join her in a trial. I consented, and, to our surprise, the moment our fingers were placed lightly upon the instrument it moved off with great energy. Questions were then asked, and the answers were written with promptness and intelligence, greatly to the amusement of the company. Desiring to know who our mysterious correspondent might be, we politely said, “Planchette, will you kindly inform us who it is that writes these answers?” to which it replied, “Peter Stuyvesant.”

“Old Governor Stuyvesant?” we asked.

“Yes,” was the reply.

Now it so happened that a short time previous to our séance the old pear tree, known as the Stuyvesant pear tree, which had stood for more than two hundred years at the corner of Thirteenth Street and Third Avenue, having become decayed and tottering, was thrown down by a blow from a passing truck and had been ruthlessly chopped to pieces by workmen; and the event had been generally noticed and commented upon. Accordingly we replied,