The Ghost Hunters - Deborah Blum [101]
Although G. P—as Hodgson came to call the personality—manifested himself at first as a voice, he preferred to communicate through automatic writing. Early on came a few bizarre and hectic trances in which Phinuit answered one question verbally, while the medium’s right hand wrote G.P’s answer to another on a paper tablet. Gradually, though, the familiar Phinuit began to fall silent. When Hodgson asked a question, the medium’s only response would be the scratchy sound of her pencil (pens were never used because of the need to continually dip them in ink) moving across a page.
It was G.P’s arrival that provided the concluding note of optimism to Hodgson’s report on Mrs. Piper. Hodgson wasn’t convinced that this new personality was a spirit. Perhaps it was no more than another peculiarity of Leonora Piper’s subconscious. But unlike the dubious Dr. Phinuit, G.P claimed to be someone Hodgson knew personally. That fact offered a realm of possible tests to determine who or what—if anyone or anything—was communicating through the baffling medium.
Hodgson began by making a list of old friends and family members of the dead writer. He would invite them, as many as would agree, to come anonymously and check their knowledge against that of the trance personality. Maybe they would confirm that this new spirit guide really was George Pellew. Maybe they would not. As always, the investigative strategy was as interesting to Hodgson as the possible results.
His investigation of the so-called ghost of George Pellew was based upon a simple idea, with a twist. He would bring more than a hundred visitors, eventually, to sit with Mrs. Piper. Some would be friends of the dead man; some would be strangers to him. But she would be given no relationship clues. No participants would be allowed to tell their names or whether they had any connection to G.P. They would be allowed to improvise personal tests, but they would not be allowed to give any explanation for them.
One visitor brought a photograph of a building.
“Do you recognize this?”
“Yes, it is your summer house.”
Which it was.
Another woman placed a book on the medium’s head.
“Do you recognize this?” she said to G.P
“My French lyrics,” he answered.
That was right too.
Another visitor, a man, simply asked, “Tell me something, in our past, that you and I alone know.”
As he spoke, Mrs. Piper sat slumped forward into a pile of pillows on the table, her left hand dangling limply over the edge, her right hand coiled loosely around a pencil. Next to her right side, a pad of paper sat on the table. Suddenly, her fingers tightened and she began to write, wildly, filling pages, ripping them off, thrusting them away from her.
Hodgson moved to the other side of the room. The man began flipping through the pages. He paled and folded the papers. They were too private to read aloud, he told Hodgson.
But he was “perfectly satisfied, perfectly.”
“I COULD NOT distinguish anything at first,” G.P told a friend during one of the sittings. “Darkest hours just before dawn, you know that, Jim. I was puzzled, confused.”
“Weren’t you surprised to find yourself still living?” his friend asked in return.
“Perfectly so. It was beyond my reasoning powers. Now it is as clear to me as daylight.”
IT WAS IN the summer of 1893, while still traveling abroad, that William James received an unexpected letter from a colleague at Harvard, a researcher who’d decided to sneak a visit to Leonora Piper, Boston’s most famous medium. The professor had contacted Hodgson using a fake name. Even after the sitting, he’d not offered his real one. Mentally, he’d been snickering as the medium slumped into her trance, as her hand began to write.
“I asked her barely a question, but she ran on for three-quarters of an hour, telling me names, places, events, in the most startling manner.” Someday, he promised he would tell James what she had revealed; for now, he’d just say it was information not meant to be shared.
Still, there were a few interesting details that he wanted to pass along. Once again, Mrs. Piper had