The Ghost Hunters - Deborah Blum [179]
70: “You can live without me”: Gauld, Founders of Psychical Research, 134-36, cites Evie Myers’s letters. The story of Myers’s courtship of Eveleen Tennant (and the implication that Annie Marshall overshadowed it from the beginning) is given in Trevor Hall, “The Mourning Years of F. W H. Myers,” Tomorrow 12 (1964).
71: William Barrett published his second report: Barrett’s second report on thought transference was first summarized in Nature in July 1881 under the title “Mind-Reading versus Muscle-Reading.” He coauthored a longer and more detailed article, based on those results, with Edmund Gurney and Frederic Myers, published in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 1 (1882), the same issue in which his first report appeared.
72: The British Society for Psychical Research formally convened: Founding of SPR and Sidgwick’s presidential address is reproduced in Sidgwick and Sidgwick, Henry Sidgwick, 360-64.
73: A dream that had haunted him for twenty-four years: The story of Clemens’s precognitive dream of his brother’s death is well known. I based my version on several accounts, including the very straightforward one given at the Web site about.com, given in its overview of the paranormal: http://paranormal.about.com/od/othermystics/a/aa090604_2.htm.
4. Metaphysics and Metatrousers
75: “the inside of a coal mine”: WJ to Charles Renouvier, Dec. 16, 1882, Houghton.
78: “the old man stubbornly turned his face to the wall”: The description of James’s father’s death is based on multiple accounts, including those in Simon, Genuine Reality; Feinstein, Becoming William James; and Jean Strouse, Alice James (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980).
78: unexpected invitation from Edward Gurney: Gurney’s invitation to WJ, Dec. 13, 1882, Houghton.
79: “one of the first rate minds of the time”: WJ to wife, Dec. 18, 1882; “I doubt its compatibility”: Gurney to WJ, Sept. 23, 1883; both in Houghton.
80: “No matter where you open its pages”: “What Psychical Research Has Accomplished,” Forum, Aug. 13, 1892, 727-42.
80: “I have been tremendously busy”: Gurney to WJ, Feb. 18, 1884, Houghton.
81: “belief in new physical facts”: WJ to Thomas Davidson, Mar. 30, 1884, Houghton.
81: “Of all the senseless babble”: From William James, “Are We Automata?” Mind 4 (1879): 1-22.
82: A few religious leaders: The religious response to the challenges of science is well told in Ronald Numbers, Darwinism Comes to America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998).
82: “I confess I rather despair”: WJ to Davison, Mar. 30, 1884, Houghton.
82: “remarkable phenomena”: William Barrett, “The Prospects of Psychical Research in America,” Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 6 (1884).
83: “paralyze the phenomena”: Henry Sidgwick’s belief that he paralyzed spiritual phenomena in Sidgwick and Sidgwick, Henry Sidgwick, 284; his analysis of psychical researchers, including himself, can be found on pp. 387-88 of the same work.
83: “a cheerful cynic named Richard Hodgson”: For my portrayal of Richard Hodgson, I draw largely on a lengthy collection of intimate letters that Hodgson wrote to his friend Jimmy Hackett, describing his days, thoughts, hopes, and plans in extraordinary detail. These letters are archived at the American Society for Psychical Research. Two other excellent sources of information are Alex Baird, The Life of Richard Hodgson (London: Psychic Press, 1949); and Arthur Berger, Lives and Letters in American Parapsychology: A Biographical History, 1850-1987 (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1988). Berger’s chapter on Hodgson (11-33) is meticulously researched and objectively told; Baird’s book is something of a hagiography. All Hodgson quotes in this section are from Hodgson’s letters to Hackett, including the Wordsworth verse and the evolution doggerel.
85: “Blavatsky carried such a reputation”: Helena Petrovna Blavatsky’s remarkable rise is described in “Madame Blavatsky’s