The Ghost Hunters - Deborah Blum [180]
86: “She is a genuine being”: Sidgwick and Sidgwick, Henry Sidgwick, 384-85.
86: “The evidence published by the English society”: The first circular of the ASPR, with its organizing principles, can be found in Berkhardt and Bowers, Essays in Psychical Research, 5-8. Founding of ASPR is described in a variety of sources, including Moore, In Search of White Crows, 142-44; Simon, Genuine Reality, 190-92; and Berger, Lives and Letters in American Psychology, 8—11. James comments on the importance of a strong science component are in a letter to philosopher Thomas Davidson on February 1, 1885, as well as his prediction that Newcomb would probably “carry the others” with him.
87: dismissed Barrett’s work on mind reading: Newcomb wrote first about his problems with the British experiments in “Psychic Force,” Science, Oct. 17, 1884; he expanded his criticisms in Science, Jan. 29, 1886, in an essay based on his ASPR presidential address of early 1885.
88: “It is worrying to think”: Gurney’s reply appeared in Science on Dec. 5, 1884.
89: “considerably off the rails”: Gurney to WJ, July 31, 1885, Houghton.
89: coined a new name: The SPR’s early experiments on telepathy, and Myers’s invention of the word, are described in many venues, including Funk, Widow’s Mite, 294-309; Rosalind Heywood, The Sixth Sense (London: Pan Books, 1971), 39-42; and G. N. M. Tyrrell, The Personality of Man (West Drafton, Middlesex, England: Pelican Books, 1948).
90: “To brand as dupes”: James, having done his drawing experiments, wrote Science on January 30, 1886, to complain. He followed that up with a letter to Newcomb on February 12, 1886, with samples of his own drawings, and wrote to the astronomer again that summer, to tell him that he was wrong about thought transference.
91: “The whole thing is a fraud”: Hodgson correspondence to Jimmy Hackett, March 19, 1885, ASPR.
92: “this perpetual association”: Gurney to WJ, Mar. 31, 1885, Houghton.
92: a country squire in eastern England: The squire’s story comes from Edmund Gurney, Phantasms of the Living (London: Trubner, 1886). I worked both from a facsimile copy of the original edition and from a compact revised edition, edited and abridged by Nora Sidgwick (1918; reprint, Hyde Park, N.Y: University Books, 1962). The squire’s story, as retold by me, is based on a series of letters on pages 163—66 of the original edition.
94: “absolutely reek of candour”: Mar. 31, 1885, after Newcomb made his presidential address.
94: analysis of ghost stories: Nora Sidgwick, “Notes on the Evidence, Collected by the Society, for Phantasms of the Dead,” Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research (1885): 69-150.
95: His third son, Herman: On July 11, 1885, William James wrote a letter to his aunt, Kate Walsh, about the burial of his son, Herman, which was among many grieving notes he wrote to friends and relatives. His visit to the old house is described in an August 28, 1885 letter to his wife. Simon, Genuine Reality (196-200), discusses both the child’s death and the way that grief led the Jameses to meet with the Boston medium, Leonora Piper.
97: Leonora Eyelina Piper: Among the countless sources for the life of Leonora Piper, I would like to reference: Alta Piper, The Life and Work of Mrs. Piper (London: Kegan Paul, 1929); Anne Manning Robbins, Past and Present with Mrs. Piper (New York: Henry Holt, 1922); Podmore, Mediums of the Nineteenth Century, 2:308-29; Amy Tanner, Studies in Spiritism (New York: D. Appleton, 1910), 9-46; and Berkhardt and Bowers, Essays in Psychical Research, from the notes section, pp. 394-400